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Comment & Response
January 24, 2019

No Evidence of Broadband Noise Having Any Harmful Effect on Hearing

Author Affiliations
  • 1VA National Center for Rehabilitative Auditory Research, VA Portland Medical Center, Portland, Oregon
  • 2Department of Otolaryngology, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, Oregon
JAMA Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg. 2019;145(3):291-292. doi:10.1001/jamaoto.2018.3985

To the Editor Attarha et al1 recommended that sound therapies using white noise should be avoided as treatments for tinnitus. This advice might stem from the authors’ collective lack of clinical experience assessing and treating patients with tinnitus, or from their unfamiliarity with tinnitus management techniques and associated literature. In any case, before recommending that white noise should be avoided by patients with tinnitus, Attarha et al1 should become more familiar with how a variety of sound therapies—including broadband sounds—often help this patient population.

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